Joseph Leahy

Reporter and afternoon newscaster

Joseph Leahy began his career in broadcast journalism at St. Louis Public Radio in 2011. He moved to Delaware in 2012 to help launch the state’s first NPR station, 91.1 FM WDDE, as a general assignment reporter, afternoon newscaster and host. Leahy returned to Missouri in 2013 to anchor St. Louis Public Radio’s local newscasts during NPR’s All Thing’s Considered and produce news on local and regional issues. His education includes a master’s degree in print and multimedia journalism from Emerson College in Boston and a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Missouri. He graduated high school at Highland Hall Waldorf School in Northridge, California and grew up migrating almost annually with his family between rural Missouri and sprawling Los Angeles. He was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1982.

Tax Day can be a tough time for anyone, but it’s especially hard for seniors facing rising personal property taxes on a fixed income. That’s according to some local lawmakers who are asking the state to give seniors a break.

State Representatives Jill Shupp and Scott Sifton are pushing two bills in Missouri’s legislature to help seniors:

Speaking in downtown St. Louis at the NRA's Leadership Forum today, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney emphasized his commitment to protecting the Second Amendment.

But Romney's record on gun control is a tough sell for some members of the influential conservative group. St. Louis native and NRA member Ed McNees says he can't trust Romney because he supported banning assault rifles while running for office in Massachusetts.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch employees are demanding corporate leaders at the paper's parent company, Lee Enterprises, give back their bonuses. They say CEO Mary Junck and CFO Carl Schmidt together collected $750,000 in bonuses at a time of layoffs at several Lee papers and cuts to retiree medical benefits.

Shannon Duffy, business representative for the United Media Guild -- the Post's largest union -- says the company's corporate leadership is out of touch with reality.

Most of the streets closed downtown following a steam pipe rupture last Thursday could reopen soon. Officials are waiting for surface sample tests to rule out asbestos as a health risk.

Dan Dennis is general manager for Trigen-St. Louis Energy Corporation, which operates downtown’s network of underground steam pipes. He says most of the clean-up is finished and residents and business owners should have parking access again soon.

When it’s “last call” on weekends for St. Louis bars and clubs, East St. Louis’ nightlife is just getting started. The city’s slack liquor laws allow nightclubs and liquor stores to operate well into the morning. Many critics say the laws are the root of the city’s chronic violent crime.

The problem poses a delicate balancing act for Mayor Alvin Parks who says East St. Louis’ late-night entertainment industry is keeping the city alive.

Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill is renewing her call to end tax breaks for major US oil companies. Speaking at a gas station in downtown St. Louis Wednesday, the Democrat said the subsidies have done nothing to reduce gas prices across the country.

"I do not think that what we give them now has resulted in any break at the pump," McCaskill said. "I think that is evidenced by the prices that we see around St. Louis and around Missouri in terms of gas prices."

March’s average temperature in St. Louis this year is almost 15 degrees above normal. If the forecast holds true tomorrow, St. Louis’s unusually high temperatures will make this the warmest March on record.

National Weather Service Meteorologist Mark Britt says the average temperature this month will be almost 61 degrees.

“The previous record of 1910 was only about 57.5 so that’s a considerable breaking of the record,” he said.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is reporting that divers have recovered the body of the carpenter, who East St. Louis police identified to the paper as Aaron Andy Gammon. The paper says Gammon was still tethered to the aerial lift that plunged into the water on Wednesday.

A top Missouri Senate leader says the state labor department is improperly working with unions to manipulate wages paid on public works projects. The state calculates an annual "prevailing wage" for various construction trades in each county based on surveys of wages already paid on jobs.

Senate President Pro Tem Rob Mayer, a Republican from Dexter, said Wednesday that state bureaucrats and labor unions had engaged in what he called "collusion.

Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill says the budget proposal of House Republican Paul Ryan would only hurt veterans and help the wealthy.

Speaking with veterans Sunday at Soldiers’ Memorial Military Museum downtown, McCaskill called the proposal a “non-starter.”

“The Ryan budget calls for a 33 percent cut in mandatory domestic spending," McCaskill said. "Mandatory domestic spending includes veterans. Now that is the same budget that gives an additional six-figure tax cut for multi-millionaires."

East St. Louis nightclubs and other local businesses are bankrolling extra weekend police patrols after a series of violent crimes.

Mayor Alvin Parks Jr. says the city needs more officers on the street but cannot afford them on its own.

“This is taking already existing officers and paying them to work this special detail," Parks said. "A detail that will be about six officers downtown and another two in the rest of the city where there might be late night activity.”

Silicon Valley has been the place for IT development since the dawn of the computer age, but new technology and cheaper resources are leveling the playing field for other cities across the country. As St. Louis Public Radio’s Joseph Leahy reports, a network of local business leaders is pushing to make St. Louis a regional hub for IT start-up companies.

Rev. Al Sharpton is joining Missouri Congressman Lacy Clay in opposing efforts to require voters to show photo IDs at the polls.

Last year, Republicans in 38 states introduced legislation that would require a state-approved photo ID to vote. Seven states have since signed it into law.

Sharpton joined Clay in St. Louis Friday at a voter rights forum to oppose a similar law from passing in Missouri. “We've got to turn this around," Sharpton said. "And start targeting in Missouri those legislators that are targeting our right to vote,” he said.

Former Massachusetts Governor and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney rallied for support at a park in the St. Louis suburb of Kirkwood Tuesday.

Republican caucuses are underway in Missouri, as the process to select a presidential nominee continues, but the party's front-runner ignored his Republican rivals. Instead, he attacked President Barak Obama, blaming him for a high gasoline prices.

A minority business advocacy group says the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District needs to do more to include minority and female workers in its projected $4.7 billion worth of upgrades over the next two decades.

Yaphett El-Amin, executive director for the group MOKAN, says because city residents and businesses pay into MSD's sewer tax system, MSD should commit more jobs to local minority contractors.

“We need a full commitment from MSD to support our region and help our businesses grow," El-Amin said, "to help our economy and hire our community.”

Hundreds of local Air National Guard jobs are on the chopping block as part of the Defense Department’s plan to cut $500 billion over the next decade.

Missouri Congressman Todd Akin, chairman of the Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee, says more than 700 servicemen at Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis and Scott Air Force Base near Belleville, Ill. may lose their jobs by the end of the fiscal year.

Warmer weather this month has the Missouri Department of Transportation zeroing in on St. Louis potholes. For the month of March, maintenance crews have pledged to respond to any pothole complaint within 24 hours.

Tom Blair, the assistant district engineer for MoDOT in St. Louis, said catching potholes now will make MoDOT’s job easier down the road.

" Because the temperatures are warming up, we’re not going to see that re-freeze that’s going to cause the potholes to come back out. So, if we fix them now, they’re likely to stay fixed for quite a while," he said.

Both sides of the debate on how St. Louis would handle local control of its police department are digging in their heels over issues of public oversight and transparency.

At a Board of Alderman community forum last night, critics argued that language on a proposed ballot initiative would preclude the department from a civilian review board and restrict public access to disciplinary records.

John Chasnoff is a program director for the ACLU, which supports local control but is suing to block the initiative.

Consumer advocates are pressing Enterprise Rent-a-Car to support a bill to keep rental cars that are subject to federal recall off the road.

Joan Bray of the Consumers Council of Missouri says while the St. Louis-based company has agreed in principle, it should endorse a Congressional amendment named for two sisters who were killed while driving a PT Cruiser under recall.

Warmer weather, a sunnier economy, and higher gas prices are driving more riders to public transportation in St. Louis. Overall Metro ridership was up 8 percent in the last half of 2011 compared to the previous year.

Dianne Williams is Metro's director of communications.

"Twenty-three million times someone stepped on a metro bus, a metro train, or a metro caller ride. That's up about 2 million boardings from the same period last year," Williams said.

Spikes and dips in cancer rates are not uncommon in public health statistics, but explaining why they occur and deciding what to do about them can often be as difficult as treating the disease itself. St. Louis Public Radio's Joseph Leahy takes a look at St. Louis County where the prostate cancer rate is unusually high.